


Sloth

by themus



Series: 7 Deadly Sins [5]
Category: The OC
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Neglect, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-14
Updated: 2008-04-14
Packaged: 2019-02-23 02:17:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13180284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themus/pseuds/themus
Summary: Seth never stopped Ryan from running away at the beginning of 102 The Model Home.





	Sloth

 

**SLOTH:**

_habitual disinclination to exertion; indolence; laziness._

 

The harsh clanging of the doorbell interrupts a sleepy documentary about Hawaiian monk seals.  
  
Will reduces the television's volume just as they start giving birth, and flaps the remote against the saggy knee of his blue sweats, waiting for the inevitable squalling from the nursery above.  
  
His wife is already there; Will can hear her footsteps on the floor above his head and the loose floorboard which squeaks and groans as weight is put on it. And then, sure enough, a tentative high-pitched cry, followed by another, surer attempt. And that's their hopeful night of six straight hours right out the window.  
  
Will sighs angrily and pushes his hands to his knees as he stands up, padding out to the door and praying - _please God_ \- that whoever is there is someone he can yell at for waking the baby.  
  
Becky is at the top of the stairs as he walks past them, pink bathrobe untied and flapping as she pats the baby's back and jigs up and down on the spot, trying to quiet her. She looks beyond exhausted, the way Will feels - eyes heavy and underlined with dark bags.  
  
"Are you going to answer before they ring it again?" she says, tiredness taking the anger out of her words until all that's left is a quiet plea.  
  
"What's the difference? She's already awake." Will blinks at the stairs, where the mottled green carpet has come away from the carpet tacks and is bulging outwards now. He meant to fix that at the weekend, he remembers tiredly. "Maybe they'll think we aren't in?" he ventures.  
  
He wants to collapse in front of the television and fall asleep forever. Just anything that isn't people or babies or demands. Just for one night.  
  
But Becky shakes her head, a thick strand of sleek black hair falling out of the messy ponytail to hit her nose. "The hallway light is on," she says, with an irritated flap of her hand. As if it's Will's fault the front door has glazed side panels, letting the light spill out onto the porch like a welcoming beacon.  
  
Will sighs again and goes to pull open the door, hoping he looks as tired as he feels and whoever it is will just go away and leave him in peace. Becky has taken the baby into their bedroom now and the crying is muted, just slightly, by the closed door.  
  
"What?" he asks, before he can get his blurry eyes to focus on the shape in front of him. When he does, he finds a scruffily unfamiliar kid - certainly not belonging to any of his neighbours - looking wilted under the vague attention of the porch light. "Look, whatever you're selling, I don't need it. No newspaper subscriptions, no cub scout cookies . . ." he trails off.  
  
"I," the teen blurts out suddenly, then stutters into awkward silence, searching Will's face.  
  
Will feels like every inch of spare skin is drooping from pure exhaustion, like one of those floppy dogs; he probably looks pretty stoned after weeks of barely any sleep.  
  
"I'm sorry," the kid tries again, "this was a bad idea. I'm sorry. I won't come back." He's shaking his head frantically, twitching his arms and legs like a demented puppet and he backs right off the porch. He swallows convulsively as he slips off the path onto Will's newly laid sod. "I'm sorry," he repeats. And this time the sound is less guttural and more familiar; familiar in its automatic repetition - that rapid-fire apology that almost ceases to have inflection and meaning.  
  
And something in Will's sleeping brain snaps on. "Wait a minute."  
  
The kid stops, staring nervously at him, movement subdued now but not stilled. The hair is much shaggier than Will remembers and the face has hardened, but when he looks carefully he can see that the eyes are still Dawn's - that deep irrepressible blue, raking over him, taking in every inch, every detail. “That you, buddy?” Will asks, tone unconsciously quiet, as if speaking too loud will break the spell and the kid will disappear. But he can see some of the tension flow out of the kid's muscles at the familiarity, until the tendons aren't straining so dangerously out of the wrists.  
  
And Will is suddenly wide awake, as if someone has injected a shot of espresso right into his heart. “What are you doing here? Is your mom in town? Your brother?”  
  
The kid shakes his head soundlessly, but it's a dismissal, not an answer. His hands are deep in his pockets now and Will notices, for the first time, the ragged condition of his clothes. The bottom of his jeans are being held together – barely – by wide strips of black duct tape and the hem of his t-shirt has come undone in places, the thread dangling in snagged loops.  
  
In all the essential ways the kid looks the same as he did the first time Will met him – glaring warily at him from the doorway of Will's filthy office trailer, saying with a look much more eloquent than words that he didn't want to be there and Will better make it worth his time. He's older now, though, thinner, more battered by life.  
  
Clearly Dawn Atwood's mothering skills still leave a lot to be desired. Which, Will realises with a sudden jolt that turns his smile into a frown, means she's hitting the bottle again. And he's sure that he doesn't want to think about what _that_ means.  
  
All he knows is that the first month of the kid's job that summer, he winced every time Will said his name, as if any attention from him was bad attention. It wasn't until Will met Dawn and started dating her - until he started catching the stomach-churning shards of comments that she threw out when the wine made her fuzzy - that he realised why the kid was such a wreck.  
  
He taps his hand against the side of his leg and notices, when an unexpected weight hits his thigh, that he still has the television remote in his hand. Will shakes his head at it and pushes himself off the door frame with his shoulder, raising his arm and pointing the remote down the hallway behind him.  
  
“Come on in, there's some leftovers in the refrigerator. Have you eaten yet?” He turns and walks back into the house, hearing soft, faltering footsteps as the teen follows him, shutting the front door carefully behind himself.  
  
His quietness hasn't changed either, that nervous uncertainty which always seemed to be at the edge of his movements back in Chino – as if a loud noise or exaggerated motion might suddenly remind Will that he didn't want the kid around.  
  
The clock in the kitchen ticks ten past nine as Will drops the remote on the counter by the stove and grabs a plate out of the refrigerator. The ceramic is cold now, icy to touch, and he drops it quickly on the table before he starts peeling back the Saran Wrap with darting fingers.  
  
“So, it's great to see you, buddy, but what are you doing here?” he asks lightly, attention on the plate as he shoves it into the microwave and spins the dial.  
  
It hums loudly for a long minute before the kid clears his throat quietly. “I, uh . . . I was hoping, I mean, maybe . . . if you could . . . you, you said--”  
  
“Whoa!” Will holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Take a deep breath and try again.” He wants to laugh, to make light of the fumbling nervousness, but he can’t, not when he has all too much of an idea why the kid has turned up so unexpectedly on his doorstep looking pale and neglected.  
  
Why he’s out wearing only a thin, stained t-shirt when the mercury has sunk into the low fifties.  
  
The kid shrugs away embarrassment, leaning back against the wall by the doorway, shoulderblade nudging the light switch. “You said if I was ever in town, to look you up. About a job,” he adds, giving Will that sideways look that tells him his reaction is being carefully measured.  
  
Will nods. “Sure, yeah.” The food is starting to sizzle violently so he pops the microwave door open and pulls out the now searing plate. “What are you after? Part time till the summer?” The food goes on the table – quiche sloping dramatically into the mountain of potato salad – all of it steaming volcanically.  
  
When Will looks up the kid's eyes are fixed on it, sharply focused. And there's something very wrong about that look; the sheer concentrated fierceness of it, like he's teetering on the near edge of insanity.  
  
“You want ketchup?” Will asks, a queasy feeling beginning in his stomach, and the kid's head snaps to him, eyes hazing just a little.  
  
“No, thanks.” He runs a tongue across dry lips. “Can I . . . ?” He gestures at the plate, with a slow, lazy movement of his arm.  
  
“Yeah,” Will blinks, “yeah, of course, go ahead.” He waits until the kid has started eating - swallowing large forkfuls without any apparent attempt to chew - and then he pulls up a chair across from him, slouching down in it with an arm resting on the table.  
  
The teen glances up at him briefly when Will fidgets, sliding a salt shaker back and forth across the imitation maple veneer.  
  
"So how _is_ your mom these days?" Will asks, watching as the boy opposite him stops eating long enough to deliver a fluid shrug and then drops his head, greasy hair covering his eyes so that Will can't see the emotion in them. "That good, huh?" Will says, mostly to himself, rolling the sarcasm around in his mouth until it becomes bitter.  
  
“She got back with AJ after you left,” the kid informs him quietly, scraping his fork through the mound of disintegrated potatoes.  
  
Will grimaces. During Dawn's wine-enhanced confessions Will heard enough inferences about AJ's tyrannical reign to be able to figure out what was not being said – like why her youngest son wouldn't let Will near enough to touch him for the majority of their spiky relationship. And why, the first and only time Will met the infamous Trey Atwood, he was not-so-gently warned to keep his hands the fuck to himself while he was in that house.  
  
It doesn't really need to be stated that AJ has stepped up the terror campaign on his second go-around.  
  
“So you want a job,” Will repeats. Anything to get away from the topic of AJ and the frightening pictures his imagination is happily supplying him with. He forgets to catch the salt shaker as it slides, heavily propelled, right past his hand and almost off the edge of the table. “Wait, are you sixteen already?”  
  
The kid stops eating, laying the fork gently down on the side of the plate. “Uh, no,” he mumbles, “why, is that a problem?”  
  
“Yeah, buddy, I'm afraid it is. You can't work construction until you're sixteen; it's the law.”  
  
The kid's face transforms from worried to desperate – lips turning up into a disbelieving smile. “But you hired me in Chino. Can't you just do it off the books, like you did then? I really need this job.” The last words are spoken to the table, head dipped again, hands clenched into fists by the plate – mouth still twisted into the jaw-clenched grin.  
  
Will shakes his head. He pulls the salt shaker back from the edge of the table, turning it round in his fingers, planting more dirty fingerprints on the stainless steel. Feeling dirty as he opens his mouth and breaks his promise. “I’m sorry, I can't do it. The people I work for now, they're strictly legit. I'd never get it past them.”  
  
“Shit.” It's an explosive whisper. The kid stands from the table, turning his back on Will and crossing his arms tightly in front of himself.  
  
Will catches his vague reflection in the kitchen window, face distorted by the dazzle of the lights, his body seeming small and frangible against the expansive inky backdrop. “Why don't you do something else for now?” he suggests, watching the fists tighten into translucent white. Money is money, he thinks, if the kid is being pressured or is trying to save up so he can get away from Dawn and her award-winning boyfriend. “Once you're sixteen I'll be happy to help you out.”  
  
“You promised!” is the choked reaction, more breath than words, and the kid raises his hands to the back of his neck, grabbing at the long hair that drapes over the collar of his t-shirt. It's obvious he's barely holding himself in check from the way his shoulders are heaving.  
  
Will sits up straight in his chair. “I'm sorry,” he says again, “I'd help you if I could.”  
  
The room goes silent except for the kid's heavy breathing and, barely audible in the other room, the soft murmuring of the television narrator.  
  
The creaking of the floorboards overhead tells Will that Becky is putting their daughter back down for the night. He is reminded suddenly of his own exhaustion and he has to stifle a yawn with the back of his hand, eyelids drooping heavily again.  
  
“Look, it's getting a little late. Why don't I drop you back home for tonight and we can meet up later to discuss it – maybe during the week? I might be able to put in a good word for you at one of our offices. It'd be legwork, coffee runs; nothing impressive, and only part-time, but you don't have to be sixteen.”  
  
Will stares, gaze a little unfocused, at the set of keys abandoned by the refrigerator and ties to calculate how long it will take his ten-year-old Buick Regal to warm up on a frigid night like tonight.  
  
But the kid is shaking his head, and his reflection shifts from light to dark as the long hair flops over his eyes. “They'll want ID, right? My social security number?”  
  
“Of course,” Will answers.  
  
“Then I can't.”  
  
The decisiveness of that statement severs Will's momentary surprise at the question, and he finds a chill spreading through his gut. There's only one reason he knows of that a poor white kid from Chino wouldn't be willing to hand over those details to a prospective employer. “What have you done?” he asks, voice so quiet that he can still hear the melodic murmuring of the television in the background.  
  
There's a sigh, equally quiet – a tiny breath of resignation, as the teen twists back towards him, grabbing at the back of his empty chair with both hands. “Ask my lawyer,” he says, with a twist of bitterness in his voice, “I missed my probation hearing; they're probably pissed off about that.”  
  
“Dammit, kid,” Will breathes, feeling the exhaustion sweeping across his body, “your mom's not in town, is she?”  
  
A quick, pained shrug of the shoulders is all Will gets and he shakes his head in frustration, bringing a hand up to rub at an aching temple.  
  
He feels stupid, not putting it together before, but his brain has been on standby since the baby came and he wasn’t prepared for this. The last thing he expected when he opened the door was one hundred and thirty pounds of emotional baggage, specially couriered all the way from Chino and the past he'd worked so hard to put behind him.  
  
“So now I'm harbouring a runaway,” he mutters to himself, “that's just great. And you were hoping what, exactly?” Will asks tiredly. “That I'd let you stay here, in this house, when you've got people looking for you? Cops, even?”  
  
The numbers on the clock are fuzzy now and he has to rub his eyes hard before he can make out the time.  
  
Nine twenty. And he's dead on his feet.  
  
“I was never going to ask that,” the kid says, timidity momentarily buried beneath angry desperation.  “I wouldn’t. And I had money saved up so I could get a place while I worked, I just . . . I lost it.”  
  
Will drops his hand from his face and looks up, finds those blue eyes focused on him, hungrily, like they were focused on the food earlier, and Will notices now what he didn't before; that unnatural sallowness to the kid's face.  
  
“I've got a wife to think about,” he says. “A daughter.”  
  
And he doesn’t want to let them down like he’s let everyone else down his whole life. He has to be a better man than that. And for that to happen, Will realises suddenly, the remnants of his life in Chino need to be wiped out. Because even though this kid isn’t dangerous, he represents everything that is. And that in itself is too much of a threat.  
  
This new life he has built started swaying the moment he opened the door.  
  
“I know,” the kid answers, in that tone which says more than his words do; that he knows what Will is thinking, too.  
  
“I love them,” Will says, with a conviction that slices through his bones and deep into him, “and I can't risk hurting them.”  
  
Even if it means hurting someone else.  
  
He can tell from the sudden expression of blanked pain on the kid's face that he already knows what Will is about to say. That he knows Will has to say it.  
  
“I need you to leave.”  
  
The kid's eyes haze over again, like he's thinking about something too painful too remember, and he nods, quickly turning and walking to the kitchen door. He pauses there, halfway through the threshold, hands stuffed back into his jeans’ pockets, shoulders stiff.  
  
“Can I, uh . . .” he starts tentatively, but with a gruff edge to the quiet hum of his voice that tells Will his pride is snapping in two. “Can I get a sweater, or something? It's cold out.”  
  
Will can already feel the chill spreading into the kitchen from the hallway with the heating off for the night, and it makes him shiver, even with the thick clothes he's wearing.  
  
He grabs one of his old sweatshirts from a pile of carefully folded laundry on the sideboard and hands it over.  
  
The kid takes it, but doesn't put it on – just lets it dangle clumsily from fingers which carry a worrying purplish tint. “Thank you,” he grits out, still refusing to look back over his shoulder. And then he's gone – a quick set of soft footsteps and the louder click of a closing door - before Will can draw a breath or change his mind.  
  
The clock ticks nine thirty.  
  
Outside, the wind begins to howl.  



End file.
